Goat Song
dear adam,
they find you with
your head blown out
down by the pond where
your step dad likes to fish.
the gravel has your bone fragments
and
blood spatter and
brains scattered in it
like the tree in front of you with
the buckshot of your
test fire:
nobody stopped the boy with
the shotgun and the
lawn chair and the
melted butterfinger on
the sidewalk.
so, now, in the low dust
your cracked cellphone.
remnants of
your last meal:
a butterfinger wrapper.
it’s a good neighborhood.
sorry for stealing your shirts.
you’re in that lawn chair --
the one you carried under your arm through the whole
good neighborhood (it’s
a good fucking neighborhood) --
with your neck bent back
and you’re slumped slightly to the side.
you could be sunbathing:
asleep in the
sweet, oklahoma spring,
down by that funny, secret pond
in the center of all the houses
with the flowers all in bloom
in the low, electric buzz of
butter yellow sunshine
but
your brother’s hunting
shotgun: the mossberg.